ABOUT KILLING KILLERS' BLOGGER: Eponymous Roxcovers cops, curs and killers and has been featured on NBC and in Crime Magazine. The author is also a regular contributor to crimemagazine.com, the Gather News agency, and Associated Content. JUMP IN: The majority of cases presented on this site are unsolved so your opinion counts -- you don't need permission to start or join discussions, vote in crime polls or submit tips on Killing Killers, and can even do so anonymously if you prefer.

Profile of a Serial Killer

You
might like to think that, if you happened to glance into those scary peepers
pictured above, you’d know immediately to walk (or run) in the opposite
direction, but this prolific serial killer fooled many of his victims into
doing otherwise.

Armed
with a smile and often sporting a crutch or a cast so he’d appear helpless, Ted
Bundy confessed to battering, raping, torturing and then killing nearly three
dozen college age women in approximately a fifteen-year period, taking credit
for the last one on that list as he was being marched to the electric chair.

Truth
is, the self-proclaimed “most cold-hearted sonofabitch you’ll ever meet,” whose
own defense attorney described as “the very definition of heartless evil,” deceived
everybody he came in contact with. Even famed criminologist and bestselling
author Ann Rule, who personally knew Bundy, didn’t suspect her charismatic associate
until officials began compiling a first-of-its-kind database in an effort to pinpoint
similarities from what few clues existed about an elusive killer slaughtering attractive
young females across the Pacific Northwest.

A
sadistic predator who derived profound sexual pleasure from “possessing” and abusing
his prey while they were still alive and
after their deaths, Bundy was the quintessential serial murderer, matching
this criminal profile in every possible way. It’s also noteworthy to the
current analysis that he too admitted to drowning at least one or more of his young
victims.

It
took nearly ten years after Bundy was put to death for a federal law to be
enacted by the United States Congress which would, once and for all, attempt to
provide a legal definition of serial murder. Titled the Protection of Children from Sexual Predator Act of 1998 it formally
defined serial homicide as a series of
three or more killings sharing common characteristics such as would imply they
were committed by the same person or persons. These included the following stringent
criteria:

• one or more offenders

• two or more victims

• distinctly separate events
at different times

• a cooling off period
between incidents

The
FBI itself identifies serial murder as ”the unlawful killing of two or more
victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.” What’s more, in order to be officially considered a
full-fledged serial murderer by the Bureau, one would have to commit at least three
such homicides within a thirty-day period.

There is more than ample
indication that serial killers have existed throughout time, but historians generally
agree it was LAPD detective Pierce Brooks who first coined the term in the
1970’s. That being said, although serial killing appears a popular activity these
days when viewed through the Hollywood blockbuster lens, according to the FBI
and other crime experts, serialized slayings do not amount to even one percent
of all homicides committed annually.

What FBI statistics can unequivocally
confirm, however, is the popular notion that serial killers are mainly young
men—over 90% are males from 25 to 35 years of age. But it is fast becoming pure
myth that these are exclusively Caucasians, as many experts are now suggesting that
other races are simply being under-reported because they are perceived by a biased
public and press as “not smart enough” to plan and perpetrate serial murders
successfully. Adding to this widespread misperception, authorities say, is the over-sensationalizing
of white male serial murderers in the media because their victims are, almost
without exception, young and attractive females.

Regardless of race, ethnicity or
sex, The FBI's Crime Classification Manual divides serial killers into
three basic categories: organized, disorganized and mixed,
the latter classification reserved for those who exhibit a blend of both organized
and disorganized characteristics. (For example, some organized killers gradually
descend into disorganized killings as they amass more and more victims.)

Hollywood’s penchant for
portraying these offenders as possessing devious brilliance in all aspects of
their existence, and the public’s willing belief in the same, is also perpetuating
a fallacy. With only a mean IQ of 113 for the “organized” brand of serial
killer, that’s just slightly above an average intelligence, not by any means the
kind of wiles considered to be at a genius level of, say, the Hannibal Lecter
variety.

Organized serial murderers
do plot their crimes intelligently, though, skillfully killing in one place and
then dumping the body in another. Clever ploys like Bundy’s crutches, leg casts,
and arm slings are also fairly typical means of luring a victim too, but this type
of killer proves just as opportunistic as any other criminal when on the prowl,
selecting the most vulnerable members of society to murder, such as drifters or
the homeless or prostitutes, whenever their ideal target escapes their grips.

But, whether it’s an unsuspecting
young woman or a down-and-out, whomever they ultimately choose, control is the
key word for individuals who fall under this particular classification. That is
at the root of their deranged behavior—the desire to power.

In that same vein, it’s
not unusual for organized killers to acquire a replete understanding of
forensic science and procedures so, once they’ve finished the grisly job they
set out to accomplish, they can competently manipulate the crime scene and the
corpse to hide their own tracks, eluding law enforcement officers while at the
same time operating in plain sight of them.

Despite such painstaking
efforts to avoid getting captured, these organized types are also the kind who
take a great deal of pride in their “handiwork” and therefore crave and court
attention to it with taunting notes and graffiti, some even boldly arranging
victims’ bodies in certain poses as a sort of recognizable signature. Strange
as that may sound, many such a killer has overtly sought glory in this way,
perhaps, in sending their gloating messages to reporters and the police, paying
homage to, and mimicking, a much more famous predecessor:

“Dear Boss, I keep on
hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed
when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke
about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit
ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the
lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to
start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some
of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with
but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha.
ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police
officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit
more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to
get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly,
Jack the Ripper”

Not quite as antisocial
as his more disorganized counterparts, an organized serial slayer, when finally
identified and brought to justice, almost always manages to shock the neighborhood
he resides in, as well as his loved ones, colleagues, and closest friends. None
of whom could have ever guessed in a million years that such a “nice” guy would
be capable of performing such atrocities.

Disorganized serial
killers, on the other hand, don’t tend to generate that big a surprise once
they’re actually apprehended. Having a mean IQ of only 92.5 which, on the
intelligence spectrum, rates somewhat below average, these are usually social
misfits who display far more palpable warning signs of mental aberrations. This
category of serial murder kills impulsively as the urge and opportunity strikes,
and does so in a characteristically brutal manner with whatever weapon is
available to them at the time. Extreme sexual violence, necrophilia,
cannibalism, and in some cases skinning their victims (as with the Ed Gein
murders, aka the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”), these bizarre acts are the norm and
not the exception for this particular class of offender.

As to murder motives in general,
aside from obvious mental disease and deeply disturbed thinking, all three
classifications of serial killers have cited a host of prompts for their repeat
offenses. These have been seen to overlap in many cases, particularly where
organized and disorganized traits have merged, but they generally fall under
the following separate categories:

While most of the male killers will
claim to have acted upon any or all of those four incentives, or various
combinations of them, hedonistic “comfort killing” is chiefly the domain of the
roughly five-percent minority of serial murderers who have yet to be discussed in
any detail here. Namely females who routinely kill with the object of inheriting
from the deceased certain things of monetary value, like life insurance
benefits, investment accounts, real estate, and other forms of transferrable property.
Homicides of this nature require psychological cunning over physical cruelty in
order to be executed successfully and, thus, are done with very little zeal and
bloodshed—fast acting poison being the weapon of choice, usually. And sometimes
drowning.

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"Do you think Sarah Majoras was murdered and then dumped into the canal?" VOTING PERIOD: February 17, 2013 to March 20, 2013. Approximately 88% of voters responded YES; 3% NO; 9% MAYBE.

CRIME POLL RESULTS:

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'Profile of a Serial Killer'

about Eponymous Rox

KILLING KILLER's true crime researcher and author Eponymous Roxwrites about cops, curs and killers and has been featured on NBC as well as in Crime Magazine, a leading resource for fans and followers of True Crime stories. Read more about the writer here.